CALEXICO  Over the course of the next six weeks or so, thousands of bird hunters will make their way to Imperial Valley for some of the best dove and pheasant hunting in the state.

Migratory doves will wing at high speeds, and resident and stocked pheasants will be kicked out of brushy fields, canals and irrigation ditches. Transitory ducks and geese will be hunted in ponds, at the Salton Sea and elsewhere.

Here on the western edge of Calexico, hard by Signal Mountain and the Mexican border, Tom Brundy’s Hay Farm headquarters represents a slice of Americana that has been lost in this day of communication gadgets and plugged in social networking.

At Tom’s Hay Farm, the communication is face to face, eye to eye or by an old-fashioned phone call. His father and grandfather were in this Valley when the Internet of the day was the Morse Code that sang in the wires. Trains ran.But that was when cattle ranches ruled. Farming was on the horizon.

At this time of year, Brundy welcomes hunters as well as clients who need hay, feed or other necessities for their ranches, big and small. And new this year is another feature at his place off Highway 98, his own version of a tractor supply and feed store. Your belt buckle and your cowboy hat don’t have to match the size of your ranch in order for you to shop at Tom’s store. He’s an equal-opportunity seller of hay and other stuff.

Brundy is boot-deep in this land he loves.

“What gets lost is the fact that we’re really only 100 years old here in terms of our pioneer history,” Brundy said in an interview back at the start of dove season in September. “We have a tremendous ecosystem that has been created out here in the Valley. There are trees and plants that hold animals that have been pushed out of the cities elsewhere. There is just a phenomenal traffic of migratory birds here in places where there was nothing before.”

Brundy is bullish on Imperial Valley’s role in the world in terms of what happens to the many crops grown in a place called the “Breadbasket of the World.”

“We feed the world,” he said. “But we not only feed people, we feed animals and birds with the habitat we create here.”

Brundy said the increase of waterfowl showing up in the drains and canals in recent years is something new, a great example of how the farming practices here have led to new wetlands for waterfowl and other wildlife.

“There were never ducks in our drains, but there’s not a drain today that you can’t visit and find ducks in it,” he said.

He said the birds and animals have relocated and thrived here for a reason. They’re escaping the traffic, the roads and the lack of habitat elsewhere.

Brundy is a first-generation farmer. His father, Walter, ran cattle.

“My dad hustled feed for cattle,” Brundy said. “Folks like Art Linkletter, John Wayne, Merv Griffin, they all bought cattle to him. He ran a lot of beef cattle. He’d grow sugar beets and the cattle would eat the tops off the sugar beets.”